Chris McNutt, executive director of the nonprofit group Texas Gun Rights, blames Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen for a Constitutional Carry bill not being heard in the House. So he went to visit Bonnen's home. (Bonnen claims that McNutt knew Bonnen wasn't at home, and calls the visit "gutless.") As a result, Poncho Nevárez, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said that "the behavior of certain

American Lawyer Media's Angela Morris, interviewing me for this article, asked me why I am fighting Texas's revenge-porn statute. Since I'm fighting these cases without getting paid nearly as much money as my time is worth (a roundabout way of saying pr* b*n* without using those words), it's a fair question for a lay audience (by which I mean "one not composed of First Amendment lawyers"). My

I've talked about the power + presence + warmth model of charisma, and about Tshkay and colleagues' affability + influence model, in which they pick six self-observable traits to describe charisma: Makes people feel comfortable.Smiles at people often.Can get along with anyone.Has a presence in a room.Has the ability to influence people.Knows how to lead a group. If you think of charisma as power + presence +

Back in May the Tyler Court of Appeals held Texas's revenge-porn statute, section 21.16(b) of the Texas Penal Code, unconstitutional. I'd shared the briefs here, and I'd written about the argument here, but I don't see that I wrote about winning the case. Here's the Tyler Court's opinion: The State Prosecuting Attorney filed a petition for discretionary review with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals: The Court

This is a note, extracted from the preceding post for special attention later. For charismatic leadership, all of these should be congruent with the emotion that you are seeking to elicit: The values you appeal to;The metaphors you use;The emotion you display; andThe language you use. The emotion you elicit, in turn, should be congruent with the action you are seeking to prompt. So it all starts

Thomas Sy and Calen Horton of University of California, Riverside; and Ronald Riggio of Claremont McKenna College, propose this model of charismatic leadership: Hey, look. A loop!I love loops. The article, Charismatic Leadership: Eliciting and channeling follower emotions, is published in Leadership Quarterly. The charismatic leader elicits an emotion in the followers, who have an emotional response. The leader channels this emotional response into congruent behavior, and

Here I solicited your self-ratings in six areas: Has a presence in a room.Has the ability to influence people.Knows how to lead a group.Makes people feel comfortable.Smiles at people often.Can get along with anyone. I hope you’re wondering what that was about. If you haven’t already shared your answers, please be so kind as to do so now.

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree, please rate how much you agree that each of these six items describes you: Has a presence in a room.Has the ability to influence people.Knows how to lead a group.Makes people feel comfortable.Smiles at people often.Can get along with anyone. Leave your ratings in the comments. Thank you.

Continuing our exploration of loops … Some loops are entirely internal. For example, Zeigarnik discovered her effect by observing a waiter who could remember a party's entire order only until he had served it. He then promptly forgot who had ordered what. The loops I am more interested in are shared between people. Of those, I see two distinct sorts: loops in which only one party is

I've been thinking about loops. I wrote about loops here, and in the intervening nineteen months I've come to a better understanding of them. Loops were called to my attention by the Zeigarnik Effect, which is that our minds will keep paying attention to open loops until the loops are closed. In hypnosis we use this effect to deliver suggestive payloads to the subconscious: if you open